This ties into a previous post I had about a 1.3 acre pond ond overpopulated with crappie and bluegill. It now does have a few larger bass( one is 4 lbs), but I need to add more. We have been removing crappie and bluegill by angling. Several of us and our kids have worked hard at it and removed an estimated 800 BG and Crappie this spring so far. We have weighed a bucket full of these fish and estimated we have removed 200 lbs of fish. How do we know when enough is enough? I assume this weight will be replaced by something over the summer and fall? If I add 10, 12 to 15 inch bass, it should increase the bass size and the bluegill and crappie size? Or does it just get replaced by smaller fish? Or does it not have to get replaced?

My concern is we take every bluegill and crappie out that we can catch. At what point do we need to throw the slightly bigger bluegill and crappie back to get bigger bluegill and crappies? Or if only removing by angling is this not a concern because we could never catch them all?

Can we make a decent estimate of the population knowing what they weigh and using Iowa DNR guidelines for weight per acre of average farm ponds in our area? For example, can I assume if said pond's holding capacity of bluegill is 500 lbs, it will have roughly 500 lbs of 1 lb bluegill, or 2000 1/4 lb bluegills? Or if overpopulated and stunted, the weight of bluegills in the pond is actually higher and therefore hard to guess the total population?
Thanks for any advice

That's a lot of fish you've removed! I'm no expert, but from what I've read, crappie aren't ideal in that small of a BOW, so you might have constant balance issues to fight with. Also, the amount of fish a BOW can hold has many variables such as aeration, feeding and fertilizing. Without knowing more details, it'd be hard to give concrete advice. I read a quote on here that said something like, "if you're wondering whether you should remove or release a catch from your pond, err on the side of removing it," and of course I'm paraphrasing here. My uneducated guess would be to keep removing, but the experts should chime in shortly.

It is aerated, we don't feed, and don't fertilize, but this is fertilie farm country. My biggest question is if you remove 200 lbs of fish, does it get replaced by something? Or is an overpopulated stunted pond exceeding its weight of fish capacity?
My goal is removing at least 300 lbs.

Phonzie,

That 200 lbs will be replaced with something. That is certain. By fall you will have reached the carrying capacity once again. This is really about numbers. You want the BG and Crappie exceeding 4" to number something less than 1000. If you can get it there, they will achieve noticably more weight and length. Once there, you may find that you'll get a bumper crop of offspring. Should that happen, you will do what you've been doing again, so it will probably cycle, but as long as you have a good number of small bass, you will be able to keep up with them with harvest. If you happen to be harvesting more than you want ... supplement more bass.

Here is what I would recommend. For now, harvest only 25 lbs more. For this 25 lbs take measurements and weights. I will upload an excel file that you can store that record in. There are a number of options in how you record. Weight and #fish, individual fish by length, or length and weight by individual. The first will suffice for our purposes. This 25lbs will serve as a sample that we will estimate some numbers but most of these numbers will be computed this fall after your remaining fish have grown into the space you have made for them.

I generally keep my mouth shut about water holes an fish in areas other than Texas. Too many regional differences. However, I have never seen a pond of less than 20 or so acres that was successful with crappie.

Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crappie and bluegill only pond. Are the crappie handling the bluegill spawns ?

It also has LMB. I just don't think enough and certainly not enough to control the bigger bluegill. There is at a few bass in the 15 to 16 inch range and at least one 20 inch bass. But bass of this size are not frequently caught.

Given you think the LMB numbers are insufficient for the BG, right now is a good time to focus on getting that number up. With your harvest, spawning will likely be the result and you want very few of the YOY to make it to 3".

One thing I would like to add is that your management of the pond along with the cooperative effort of your family is an very good example of how a pond needs to be managed generally. The single most important factor to a quality fishery is population structure and it requires commitment to harvest at times when the size of harvested fish are at weights less than desired. I think you will succeed with this because there is no lack of commitment. Keep us posted.

Based on the experience of members with crappie, I have come to the conclusion that success is determined by willingness to harvest and pond owner perspectives. Crappie, IMHO, generally can't be left alone to do their thing in a small pond or the results will be a great disappointment. But the crappie in Phonzie's pond are a harvestable size and they are providing both priceless diversion from everyday cares and food for the table. If he were throwing those fish back to grow up, he couldn't help but be disappointed and both the pond ecosystem and his fish would suffer. Based on providing fishing enjoyment and food, I say the pond is successful right now as it is.

To say a crappie pond that produces 8" crappie is a failure... when you think about it ... is just exactly like saying an LMB pond that produces 3 1/2 lb LMB is a failure. I would like to think that the range of "acceptable, enjoyable, and worthwhile" is much broader than that. Any pond producing 8" crappie is manageable via culling harvest and practically any size pond with sufficient predators can do that. On the other hand, very few ponds less than 20 acres can sustainably produce >10" crappie unless considerable harvest of the smaller sizes is practiced. I think the key to satisfaction is wanting to harvest 8" crappie and enjoying that task. If that piece is there, crappie can be grown successfully in small ponds.

So we harvested some more fish tonight. Roughly 25.75 lbs total. The crappies were 7 to 8 inches long and weighed 11 lbs 6 ounces total. So they averaged 3.6 ounces (.225 lbs) per fish. We also took 100 BG 4.5 to 6.5 inches weighing 6 lbs 6 ounces. They averaged 2.32 ounces (.145 lbs). Not close to where we want to be, but feel we are in the right direction..? We probably need to add bass right away. So I think we are around 1000 fish removed this spring. Probably 60% BG and 40% crappie removed.

The correct direction indeed. You have a good baseline from which to compare average weights from your creel going forward.

Yes, I would supplement the LMB as soon as possible. See if you can add 8 or 10 LMB/acre at lengths of around 8 to 10 inches ... So 10 to 13 of them. Whether you have sufficient number of LMB could be determined from their growth and the abundance of BG YOY in the Fall. If your are interested in tracking the growth of individual LMB, you can devise a fin clip scheme that allows you to recognize individuals (kind of like they do whales by fin scars). The scheme could visually provide you with the year of clipping and the id number of the fish in that year.

Just a quick question. You mentioned harvesting 25.75 lbs but the total of BCP and BG was 17.75 lbs. Did you harvest another species also?

No I posted the wrong number of bluegills weighed. 44 BG weighed 6 lb 6 oz. The kids kept fishing after I weighed those and they also had some in another bucket I didn't weigh.. It was 100 total BG but I used the average weight of the 44 BG to come up with a total estimated BG weight of 14.5 lbs not 6 lbs 6 oz.

Shouldn't I be trying to get bigger bass than 10-13 inches? That way they can eat 3 and 4 inch crappie and BG ? Or is a smaller bass size better right now ?

I don't think 10" to 13" are too large but you can add more of the smaller ones and have more predator encounters. You have cleared 225 lbs of space in your pond. Two things will happen, the fish still in the pond will grow ... and ... the BG will reproduce. Consequently, in order for the fish still in the pond to grow at their maximum rates, most of their offspring must be cropped by LMB when they are a smaller size. (ideally when less than 2").

To be reliable predators of 3" to 4" BG the LMB need to be 20" long. If the LMB biomass is concentrated in fish of 20", they will not keep up with BG YOY and BG (and BCP) growth will be slow. By concentrating the LMB in smaller fish you can have many more of them that must focus on the YOY. For example, for every 20" LMB you can have 8 10" LMB --- they weigh roughly the same in aggregate. So what you are trying to do by have many 10" LMB is to prevent having so many 3"-4" BCP and BG.

A simple trick to improve your entire fishery would be to put maximum harvest pressure on the female bluegill. Take out every single one that you can. Be relentless. This way you can never harvest over 50% of the adult fish. There will be enough males left to occupy all of the key spawning grounds which means that the smaller males will continue to add weight in order to compete next year. In a pond that is over an acre, if you keep every crappie that is under 10 inches you’ll eventually establish a small population of larger fish. I’m sure catching an 11 incher every once in a while would be a treat. Two years from now would you prefer to be catching high numbers of small bass or small numbers of big bass?

This question includes the question, "Two years from now would you prefer to be catching high numbers of small BG or small numbers of big BG?"

Excellent point. But I think this is an easy fix. Big bluegill in a 1 acre pond that receives harvest is easy. Especially if there is some artificial feeding.

Female only harvest is a proven method. Easy to accomplish and easy to teach the kids.

I will concur that harvest concentrated in female BG will diminish BG fry swim up and probably help reduce recruitment. It's something I practice in the ponds I am trying increase BG size. Even so, I can find nothing that reliably quantifies the effect. I have never seen this practiced in a vacuum, that is, without other very important management actions. Most importantly, without also managing a population of small LMB. Harvesting female BG reduces competition for food leaving the faster growing and larger males to grow larger. Still there must be sufficient predation of YOY or they can accumulate and intercept the natural foods slowing the growth of larger BG.

There is a natural inverse relationship between the relative size potential of predator and prey. Though not a physical law per se, it is at least descriptive of the nature of ecosystems with predator and prey interaction. Artificial feeding cannot undo it though I would agree that it can benefit the pellet hogs with greater weight and growth along with the unwelcome consequence of shorter life. IMHO, no matter what one does to grow bigger BG, they always benefit from a population of LMB concentrated in lengths < 12".

Actually, in a 1 acre pond you will have no loss of recruitment with maximum harvest of female bluegill. The number of female bluegill is not the limiting factor. The actual limiting factor is numbers of appropriately sized zooplankton available for the fry.. And I have practiced it in a vacuum many times. It works 100% of the time. Or at least has so far....
If you assume having a remaining 400-600 adult fish after harvest, you would never have to replace more than 100 fish via recruitment to maintain a fishable population. Just a couple of dozen surviving females will produce hundreds of thousands of young fish to fill that void. So harvest away. There are several good threads on this forum regarding sexual ID of adult bluegill. The nice thing is you can be wrong every once in a while and still be OK.

OK, so if it is zooplankton limiting recruitment, how will harvesting females only limit the fry survival to fingerling size ... say 2"? If the 20" LMB in the pond favor 3 1/2" BG for food, then what is going to eat the BG that are between 2" and 3 1/2"? Wouldn't BG of this size be abundant well beyond the 100 fish we need from recruitment? What happens when the big LMB grow from 20" to 24" and then prefer >4" BG? Won't there be a great number of 3" to 4" BG that neither phonzie nor the big bass prefer to eat? At this length, won't the females be reproductive and won't it be difficult to tell whether they are male or females? I am just saying, large numbers of small LMB are for people who like for their ponds to produce harvestable panfish with the least management effort.

All of your points are extremely well taken.
Sometimes a person however can over-analyze the situation. If you can harvest as much as 40% of the adult population of any one species in any one year, you are almost always going to increase the growth rates of the remaining individuals. But with bluegill you get the added benefit of socially encouraging the younger males to compete for nesting grounds the following year. They will consequently spend much less time working nests and more time foraging. Not to mention the fact that male bluegill probably have a higher top end anyway as far as size. So it’s much simpler to at least momentarily disregard how the young of the year fish are doing in the equation. Good water quality and supplemental feeding will assure that this year‘s hatch gets off to a good start. Now you have the bluegill problem solved. Crappie are trickier. The easiest thing to do with them is harvest everything under an arbitrary length. Just my dad and I have made a significant effect on 1 acre ponds through harvest of crappie. This just leaves us with bass. That’s why I was curious what the ultimate goal is of the bass. Also, perhaps I haven’t read close enough but are we feeding pellets?

I used to pick up one our departed members, and we would head to his pond to flyfish for CNBG. I was directed to remove every female caught, with only one exception. If I was in eye sight of Mrs. G., smile and throw them back. He said female CNBG at the feeder were taking calories away from the big bulls that he was targeting. Much easier than trying to sex LMB in July. I miss that old fart.

So do I.

We have never fed and currently do not. It has been discussed, but the fear is that its a short term expensive bandaid. Because what happens from December through March when the pond is frozen? Also would be a little concerned going into winter with a fish population that has been fed and grown to over capacity. Not sure if that would be a problem or not since we aerate.
My theory on the Bass was that I think we have plenty mouths to eat the YOY with the crappie and even the BG. Or is my theory wrong and they don't eat much of each other's fry? We do catch some 8 to 12 inch bass occasionally. They certainly are not plentiful but they are there.

I would like to end up with larger size population of all species of course. But maybe that's not possible. I think hole we have in food chain is bass to harvest bluegill and crappie we can't catch. So I am rethinking this a little now and maybe I will add 2 sizes of bass. Some 14 to 16 inches, and some 10 to 12 inches. If I can get 1 or 2 larger than 16, I will add that also.
So far we have added a 15, 16, and 3 from 13.5 to 14.5.

When you catch a smaller bass does it look healthy?

Yes. In general the bass and BG look healthy. 50 % of the crappies look thin.

Lot's of wisdom in what you wrote. Its a very productive pond anyway. The production of any mature pond without feed inputs is determined solely from mortality. What ever dies, allows other fish to grow. So removing 225 lbs of fish is worth at least 450 lbs of Optimal ... simple as that. It is likely that maximum standing weights occur in the fall and that winter determines the carrying capacity. So yes if you feed them to a greater fall standing weight ... it is possible ... even likely that the spring weights will be no higher and all the feed gains be lost. (that would stink). If one is going to feed, he needs to think about harvesting the gain the feed created or it may be completely lost.

I agree that feed as a solution to making BG bigger is short term. Feed will greatly benefit existing bass in that BG spawning will be stimulated but they will be under numbered for the task of controlling BG numbers. How do I know? Because they are under numbered to begin with. If so, then how could they possibly be strong enough in number to control BG when the production of BG is dramatically increased by feeding? Its like pushing on a string. Your approach to this problem is exemplary.


No it is isn't wrong. The existing BG and BCP are going to be eating fry. I guess the question is whether it will be enough to prevent a big crop of 4" BG 1 year olds next year.


It just depends on the balance you are looking for. I think you can grow BG to 9" while growing LMB to 3-4 lbs. To do that I think you need to harvest BG and BCP like you do now and keep the LMB in a progression of sizes. If you want BG to reliably get larger than that, then seek to have more LMB of smaller individual weights. If you want LMB to reliably attain weights > 4 lbs, then your BG are going to be limited to smaller lengths. So its just a matter of what is important to you.

If we would decide to feed the BG and BC and then remove some bigger fish in fall or winter ice fishing, does feeding fish affect how much fry they will eat during the months we are feeding them? I mean we need them to eat the fry to avoid a large population right ? So if we are feeding them will they feed as heavily on the offspring that is being created now ?

Keep in mind, once again, that the limiting factor on fry survival, fry recruitment, and fry advancement is availability of appropriately sized zooplankton and not the number of bluegill or crappie eating them. Only so many are going to make it regardless of the number of predators eating them. That however is only true up until the point that the young of the year quit eating zooplankton.

I don't know of any particular research documenting this for BG, but I do know of research pertaining to LMB and the yes feed trained bass tend to rely on feed. We must keep in mind, however, that BG do not need to be trained and have already developed the skills required to survive in the absence of feed. But then there are other variables. If feeding intensifies the natural bloom it will provide alternatives to fry and also reduce the visibility providing some level of cover. Whether, more or less fry are consumed by BG & BCP is a tough call and I don't know the answer. Even so, I do think it is probable that feeding will allow more YOY to survive due to the enhancement of bloom and fertility.


Just an anecdote but I have caught 2" BG on 1/2" Gams.

I would think that by the time BG reach 1" in size they are cannibalizing younger BG fry and other things bigger than typical zooplankton. Just keep in mind that millions upon millions of fry will swim up and there can be several peaks in spawning and BG can spawn more than once in a season. Feeding will help to boost zooplankton for the BG fry to feed on. A slaughter must take place and it does. Very few fry survive but this doesn't necessarily mean that BG are not able to over reproduce themselves. Buck & Thoits studied BG in monoculture and they attain individual counts into the 10s of thousands per acre without a predator like LMB. On their own, they cannot control their numbers except by mass mortality events where it may be said they were the cause of their own destruction.

I am enjoying this thread immensely because it sort of pertains to my situation. Keep it going Phil.

Bluegill absolutely love to eat small fish. I’ve watched 11 inch bluegill eating adult gams for hours.

Actually probably most of the crappies look thin. Will stunted fish grow to a reasonable size or is their potential limited due to their age ?

Highly limited. Lost growing seasons are never recovered fully. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be decent fish and fun to catch and eat.

These are excellent points that aren't emphasized enough. Your success/failure of your pond is only determined by the goals you set. In jpsdad's example, I'd call a pond that produces 3.5lb LMB a success while another person might not be happy until its producing 5 pounders.

How big they grow from here will depend on their age. You should expect that most of the energy is going to go into filling them out ... but they will also grow in length to. Because of this combination of effects they may not quite reach standard weight before they die or are harvested. I am eager to learn how they respond to your harvest. They have less competition and there should be very good BG fry production that will provide them the 3/4" to 1" fish they need to make the step to 10" crappie.

Update. So far we have removed 1300 BC and BG this spring. And added 12 bass. The bass were 13.5", 2 14", 5 15 ", 2 16", 17" and 18".
My hope is that some the weight removed from the crappie and BG (around 225 lbs) will be put on the bass added to the pond by them eating 3 to 5 inch fish. Hopefully this leaves more room and forage for the remaining 8" BC and 6" BG that are left. Hopefully this allows them to reach a decent harvesting size. We shall see. We are looking at adding a few more bass yet.

The 18 inch bass added weighed 2lbs 7 oz. This seemed a little light? But it is early post spawn yet.

Would think having lots of BG would be good for pond with BC and LMB. Are the BG being stunted?

The 18" LMB was probably standard weight pre-spawn.

OK. So based on these numbers and those that you posted in the other thread we have the beginnings of a fall forecast. Lets work the assumption that the weight harvested with be replaced through growth of the existing population. Truth be told, it should be greater than that and it is very likely that last fall's standing weight was greater than this spring's. Even so, there will be recruitment and so with a little luck the existing fish get the harvest gain and the recruits get the fall minus spring gain.

Lets convert the harvest to acres (where the gross acreage = 1.3)

225 lbs / 1.3 = 173 lbs per acre

60% BG = 103 lbs BG/acre

40% BC = 69 lbs BC/acre

Given you are in fertile farm country lets assume 500 lbs/acre for carrying capacity. This could be high or low but it is reasonable for an older bow in northern MO or southern IA. To be sure, the standing weight for LMB will probably sustainably max at 100 lbs/acre but the standing weight may be much smaller as a legacy of the fish kill earlier experienced. The 8" crappie are helping with the BG predation and so many of your BG are big enough to harvest(though smaller than you would like to have to harvest them). You should keep this in mind because at this point harvesting BC without increasing the LMB could remove some much needed BG predation.

So I think it is useful to attempt to gain a sense of what percentage of weight you harvest from each species. In the case of BC, I think you harvested a remarkable percentage of your existing fish. BC standing weights are typically less than 100 lbs but they can be as high as 170 lbs. I have never seen anything documenting standing weights greater than this though I suppose it is possible albeit unlikely. We will make an estimate and use this as a base line for forecast. Now we are going to be wrong but it is worthwhile anyway. The reason it is worthwhile is because the growth this fall will help us to estimate how much we were wrong and that will guide us to better numbers. I am going to assume a spring standing weight of 140 lbs BC/acre. If so, you removed half of the crappie! Well done!

Now this leaves 70 lbs of growing space and your remaining BC have the potential to double in weight. To double in weight will take them from 8" to approximately 10". Maybe a little less because they will be filling out too OR maybe a little more because the harvest will help secondary trophic organisms to be more numerous. But 10" is a good base line to look for this fall for your BC. If they exceed, then maybe the carrying capacity is less than I estimated, if they fail to achieve the 10", then maybe the carrying capacity is greater.

Now to the BG. If we assume 500 total weight/acre and that the BOW carried 50 lbs LMB and 140 lbs BC going into spring then the BG carrying capacity is 310 lbs/acre (with BC also present otherwise would be greater). So it looks like you may have harvested 1/3 of the spring standing weight of BG. Again ... Well done! Assuming your present standing weight averages 6" in length you can expect a 50% gain in individual weight and an increase to an average length of 7". What is clear is that there is much more room for you to harvest BG. And so I think you can grow the BG to an average length > than 7" (this year) if you continue harvesting through the summer. I think you could harvest an additional 100 lbs of ~ 6" most of which (weight) will be replaced anyways by Fall. Clearly, in your particular pond, the BC or more easily managed and require less harvest than the BG.

Now this takes us to Fall. Guess what? The harvest isn't over. You could harvest potentially another 90 lbs of BC still having 90 lbs to grow into impressive specimens and another 130 lbs of BG. This would take your pond into winter with 273 lbs BG, 90 lbs BC, and 65 lbs LMB(assumes 50 lbsLMB/acre) . So you would be going into winter with 329 lbs/acre in a pond that can carry 500 lbs/acre. There should be better survival and even some growth through winter under these conditions. Next year, your harvest should be easier to implement and the fish much larger than they have been.

I would keep harvesting every crappie that you catch. With their larger mouth (gape) size, they can eat a LOT of smaller bass that would escape predation if there were only BG in the pond just doe to their gape size vs. BG. By removing a lot of crappie, you are helping the bass population and you might not even have to buy larger bass. Crappie spawn before the bass do, so they are able to eat the smaller newly hatched bass if they can get past Dad who guards the fry for a week or so after hatching.

Phonzie,

Please update us on your BCP and BG growth. After removing 225 lbs of them, would be great to hear how this harvest affected the remaining fish.

I have a real problem when trying to figure fish weights per acre. In a fertile pond where visibility is low at 18 to 24" it's tough to do. I learned you can't use lmb relative weights to determine if there are too many in the pond. That did not work well enough to reduce my fish kill, most all of my lmb were over the 100%. Some fish guys recommend 30 bg to each lmb for stocking rates and then the bg spawn. You add Tp and they spawn but then they die off leaving a lower pounds per acre of fish. I may just be to dumb to figure it all out.

Tracy,

Great LMB relative weights and excessive pond standing weights, though it may seem counterintuitive, may make perfect sense if the standing weight of predators and adult prey fish are especially large. For the LMB to possess good relative weight, there must be an abundance of YOY and so when a large standing weight of predators and adult prey fish are present, good condition of the predators might indicate unusually high standing weights of prey offspring.

Especially when feeding or fertilizing to enhance the production of prey YOY, I think it is important to harvest prey fish that exceed the optimum lengths consumed by predators. In the case of feeding, at least the GAIN that the feed is contributing to prey fish adults should be harvested, IMHO.

Like i said i may not be the sharpest pencil in the box. It is my understanding that you want the largest forage fish to remain in the pond because they produce the most fry that then grow into the most needed correct sized forage fish that provides the good growth to your trophy's. My first attendance to the Pond Boss Conference it was said you want couch potato bass. Meaning that the lmb never had to move much in order to eat and gain wt. And when talking about fertile water, I only fertilized that first spring. Never had to do it again. And when talking feeding the forage fish, I learned over the years I could never fill the bg up, they would just eat and eat. So when feeding, I think it should come in moderation or you might be causing water problems and low bank accounts. One thing I have learned is that every pond is different and mine did not fit the norm from day one. Most likely due to high forage numbers from the very beginning. My problem was with the fish was due to not knowing my plants as well as I should have known them and how fast they could take over and I won't let that happen again.

I am always going to edit out any self-derogatory remarks anyone posts and I am just going to say that you have done nothing to deserve those self-inflicted wounds.

When your HSB died I felt your loss. But you should know that fish kill can happen in any pond whether it is fed, fertilized, or neither. That said, a kill will only happen when conditions prevail that the standing weight exceeds the carrying capacity. It is very easy for a pond to attain standing weights that exceed carrying capacity. This has happened in several ponds where the experience has be recently posted, in the case of Phonzie and another member, there were drought conditioned that concentrated fish in a small area. The reduction of volume and area was too much and fish died.

In most any year fish standing weights exceed carrying capacity and some what we may deem natural mortality occurs to restore balance. The stressful conditions take the weak and the old and we don't even notice what is happening. As Dave mentions from time to time "Lusk says that few dead fish float".


I've highlighted both of those sentences as go and no go. The green sentence is a go and it should come before the red sentence. What is dangerous about the red sentence is that it is just too broad and it isn't moderated by true metrics. This is a case where being true isn't all inclusive. As the biologist members say, "it depends". There is substantial evidence that there is a goldilocks standing weight of mature BG that produce the most fry. So a properly constrained true statement is that you want a goldilocks standing weight of large BG for the breeding population. Anything more than that is going to reduce production of the fry that you need to grow those LMB. You have low visibility due to fertile water and so conditions favor survival of fry and BG spawning. Tracy, sometimes the truth seems counter-intuitive but on deeper reflection will make sense. If 40 lbs/acre of BG adults is really good for the production of YOY BG ... why isn't 400 lbs of BG adults 10 times better? The answer lies in that the pond is a closed system with limited resources. You can easily fill the 360 lbs of remaining carrying capacity with YOY when the adults do not occupy it. One has to push the standing weight beyond carrying capacity to produce the same weight of YOY if the standing weight of adults is very high.

I understand what you are saying when you have to many of the biggest cnbg. Going back to what i said earlier "trying to figure the weights of fish per acre" . My pond is not a laboratory where I can see under or through the clear water. That puts me into an educated guessing game. So, how many big cnbg is to many? It's a SWAG based on catching them and or seeing them the best you can. In my case after two shock surveys, it is a shot in time. A tool, but I am not convinced how accurate it really is. All the fish in the pond are not in shallow water. So, I can not agree or disagree with your good and well thought out comments. I am just saying it is not easy to determine when there are to many.

So I agree with all of this. That said, I think you are erring on the wrong side of this equation. In other words, I think that you may worry most about the most minor risks. It seems to me that your are very concerned that you will remove too many and feel more confident in having too many than too few. I would just say this.

You may be doing more harm by under-cropping than you realize and the risks of over-cropping are probably less than the risks of under-cropping .

BG grow fast. They can easily quadruple in weight in a single season. Even if you were to take out half of their weight now they'd recover their standing weight within a couple of months of the next growing season. I think a good approach is to make that SWAG and just go with it. Take 30 percent of that SWAG each late summer/fall. What you don't want to eat turn into lumps that your feed trained LMB will eat. One approach to ensuring you have plenty of the appropriately sized Male BG is to fin clip 40 lbs of them annually. They should be in the 6" to 8" range. Every other year choose a different location to clip. Once you have done this start removing fish that don't have the clip in the correct location. That is at least one way you could be sure that you have the minimum mature sized BG you need.

If you crop your mature BG, the pond will respond like a tree that has been pruned. The remaining branches (BG) will grow faster and produce more leaves (YOY). The standing weight will be able to endure temporary setbacks in carrying capacity (like extended cloudy weather). Your dependence on feed to stimulate YOY production will be reduced. Some of the nutrients will be removed by you and your guest when they are taken home for eating. It will be a win-win. You just need more faith that this action wont be harmful and more faith in your BG's capacity to fill the capacity you are creating with YOY and new breeding sized BG.

Tracy the pond you have now (current status) is not the pond you had last year. IMO you need more info on where things stand. RW on all species would help. You are correct that " It is my understanding that you want the largest forage fish to remain in the pond because they produce the most fry that then grow into the most needed correct sized forage fish that provides the good growth to your trophy's" .

Large well conditioned BG produce at much higher rates and are more successful at reproduction up through early yoy stage than average BG. What happens after that is a function of pond productivity , population dynamics (numbers and size of all species) and a lot of other factors.

I would not hazard a guess on what you should do with the facts I have. Prof Dick Anderson (he developed the concept of RW and condition) told us that you should harvest fish in the size range that looks bad (poor condition due to food shortage) until that size range condition has improved. I think that is a little vague (does not provide for the time lag involved) but the concept is right.

To be sure BG with good RW tend to be the spawners and condition will be reflected in egg counts and effective defense of nests on an individual fish/nest basis. But I fail to see any evidence that populations of larger BG produce more offspring than populations of smaller BG. Time and again, the key factor as to whether BG grow to large sizes is how many BG there are. If taking larger BG reduced fry production, then we would see a shift to larger BG sizes as a consequence of that. Yet we don't. It turns out that after the big BG are taken, there is more reproduction and the BG of subsequent generations do not get as large. There is no evidence supporting the proposition that BG reproduction is adversely affected overall (for the BOW) or that BG populations do not swiftly recover harvested biomass. All evidence suggests that reproduction is too high to support the previous BG growth rates over time.


Right, what happens after free swimming is very important as to the number of fry that develop to the 2" sizes and larger. While LMB play a role here, the dominate forces shaping survival is intra-species competition and cannibalism of the very young free swimming fry. A single pair in a forage pond can produce as many 1" to 3" offspring in a season as a 1 acre pond can with 200 equivalent pairs.

Eric, you are so right when you said my current pond is not the pond I had last year. Fish kills really do suck. However, My learning curve over the past 6 yrs should help me grow even larger lmb faster than I did prior to the kill. What lmb that are left in the pond may not be pure Florida's and may not be pure Northern and last spring should have produced my first F1's. I had all of those fish in the pond. So, I plan on going back and adding new Florida's to what strains I have left and so it would be nice if i could have the high forage numbers. The pond does have some nice sized cnbg along with good numbers of other sizes from what I see at the two feeders. But I have no idea if I have what jpsdad says when speaking about to many. How many of the largest bg is to many? In the past years, I would remove 50 or so in the 7" range each year to make room for the new spawned fry. In the past years i have removed those 7" and then early spring add 50 lbs of FHM's to take the pressure off the bg fry. By doing this I have seen really high numbers of 2 to 3" cnbg everywhere a few months later. I will remove some again this year but I have no plans on removing the largest. It goes against what I have understood for the past 5 yrs, I will lose those fish soon enough due to age anyways. I think jpsdad may make a good case but I just can't go against what I have been told from others that are supposed to know the correct path. That is what they do for a living, they made those recommendations to keep the largest, remove some of the smaller sized, the ones the lmb can't eat because they are to large, add the fhm's and watch alot of those smaller forage sized bg show up all over the pond. I will never forget the first time I followed those recommendations made in March and by late June the 3" cnbg were everywhere. Going back, how many lbs of fish per acre is where I get lost in all of this. I have not found a way to figure it out.

No worries Tracy. I don't make a living at this for sure. I will reiterate what I once told you. Since you are paying for help from people who have you on prescription, follow the prescription and don't deviate from it. This is especially true given what you have invested in this project.

I can't help my skeptical nature. It's just the way I am geared to think and I will challenge any hypothesis/conclusion that doesn't have support from evidence. I do have a different philosophy about pond management, this is for sure. I don't think the food chain is broken by the lack of formulated feed for example. I think population management is the best approach to meeting goals. And I think a pond should be managed to limit its biomass of fish to safe and sustainable levels that do not carry as much risk of fish kills. To me, this is the best way to approach pond management.

If you think this is important to the management of your pond ... you should probably figure it out well enough to make good management decisions.

I would just add this. Even you have found "no way" to make estimates of standing weights doesn't mean others can't make reasonable enough estimations of this important factor to make good and beneficial harvest and management decisions.

See below - my comments in blue.

I can't help my skeptical nature. Don't try - that is a good trait and leads to much scientific advancement. It's just the way I am geared to think and I will challenge any hypothesis/conclusion that doesn't have support from evidence. Agree but have learned (from reading thousands of studies and from hands on experience - mine and others)) that evidence can and often is misunderstood or wrongly applied. I do have a different philosophy about pond management, this is for sure. I don't think the food chain is broken by the lack of formulated feed for example. Feeding just increases what is already there - its up to the manager to manage the population. I think population management is the best approach to meeting goals. Agree and not sure if there is another solution/option. And I think a pond should be managed to limit its biomass of fish to safe and sustainable levels that do not carry as much risk of fish kills. Agree but others goals are often more aggressive and they will opt for more risk to attain the goal. To me, this is the best way to approach pond management Population management starts with understanding total mortalities ( = natural deaths + harvest). Harvest is the easier to manage. Managing natural mortalities is very hard and requires all the knowledge and techniques we can get/use. The other part of population management is understanding reproduction - another hard to manage area.

Eric,

I find myself in complete agreement with your comments above. After re-reading these posts I realize I don't understand the depth the kill Tracy experienced at his pond. I read only enough of his original thread to understand that HSB died and after offering encouragement I didn't return to it. To be sure, I think as long as a person understands what's at stake he can push the envelope implementing things like feeding, aeration, and algaecides to mitigate risks. I do know that Tracy voiced concerns about his BOW in an earlier thread saying he had a good thing going and didn't want to push it over the edge. I made similar comments in that thread but we couldn't agree that a plan limiting numbers of fish could be implemented successfully due to unforeseen natural mortality.

You make an excellent point, as did Tracy, that it is difficult to understand natural mortality and this is recurring object of discussion when we talk about harvest and in particular risks of over-harvest. I think the best we can do when opting to limit weights is to work with a plan where the goal is to limit the number of adult fish through a process of selecting (or potentially stocking) a specific number of them annually while fishing or surveying the water. Its a different mindset to work to limit the numbers/weight and a person will have fewer than wanted/planned due to mortality that was unplanned. So its not perfect, but when selecting rigorously and following growth it is possible to make reasonable estimates of standing weights of this group on the trophy path and what their forage requirements are.

Natural mortalities do effect the populations of fish and is something that I experienced at my pond. It is hard to determine how much they effect the pond but they do effect it. Over the past 6 yrs I have had at least 7 or 8 otters that showed up at different times and it might take days before you see they are there. I did find fish bones and fish scales along with scatt where the otters dined. And the Osprey that shows up every year, i have seen it carry off some pretty good sized cnbg. Then there is the Bald Eagle that shows up and stays around for a while. They can easily carry off a 5 lb lmb. And those Great Blue Herron that's there most every day of the year. Not to mention the lmb that are large enough to eat an 8" or better lmb. I am pretty sure that happened alot at my pond prior to the fish kill. Takes me back to how many lbs per acre of fish in the pond?

Tracy, one thing is for sure. It was the combined weight of all fish that tipped the balance. So we can't blame the weight of predators in a vacuum and just target them in our attempts to manage standing weight. Most ponds have three times the predators standing weight in forage fish. But it most cases, the majority of these fish are only contributing to forage the predators can eat by reproducing. At any given moment in time, the standing weight of forage the predators are actually eating is small in relation to the standing weight of forage fish and the standing weight of the pond as whole.

Consequently, harvest should be targeted both for predators having attained target weights (or ages) and for forage fish that can longer contribute to the food chain except by reproduction. Most of the harvested weight, therefore should be concentrated in forage fish too large to contribute significantly as food for predators. This will also stimulate production of prey the predators can eat. It isn't a static system, it quickly reaches stalling limits and only intervention by managers or nature (through mortality) can bring the system below the limit again.

There is an exception to this. When the predators are so numerous and of small lengths, they are able to prevent the prey fish from overpopulating. Under these conditions the system remains below capacity and growth rates and conditions of the prey fish are very good but the predators tend to be lean. This is natures way of achieving sustainable balance.

Pond - Black Swann events are very difficult to anticipate and or plan for by definition . Buffering space is one concept that helps. If you have room in your pond for all factors you are way ahead. By buffering space I mean - Something that lessens or absorbs the shock of an impact or one that protects by intercepting or moderating adverse pressures or influences.

Absent an unknown water quality issue I have from the outset thought Tracy's event was a carrying capacity issue.

Quantifying things is doable even if it is estimated based on tools we understand like RW , RC , water quality measures , plankton densities , seine surveys , electrofishing, etc. . The most important concept to keep in mind is that we are always working behind the curve. That is, those tools give us a point of reference in time that will change rapidly in advance of our management actions (delayed effect). The real gift , the "art" part of fisheries management - is the ability to foresee/anticipate future results from current info and management actions and be able to adjust to changing (unanticipated) conditions , often in mid-stream.

Hind sight is 20/20. Yes I agree fish weight per acre was to high. But remember the bushy pond weed covered 75% of the pond. That and the weather in combination killed the fish. I should have harvested more of the hsb. In my opinion, I did not have to many lmb. Here is why. The pond never had many yoy of lmb. Using fishing, and e survey never showed any numbers of small lmb. I'm talking lmb under 14" . You could not thin or cull those lmb because you almost never caught one. I removed 7 the year of the kill. That is all I caught. And almost never saw one in the pond. Never shocked one up except that first year when we shocked 10 months after stocking. We shocked up 5 in that size range so we restocked using 1 to 1/2lb legacy lmb from Overtons. As I said earlier, the pond was never in the norm. None or little lmb reproduction or yoy lmb survival the first 3 yrs. Since the fish kill, I am seeing some yoy lmb this year.

Eric, I forgot to mention those Blk Swann (Cormants) events along with all those other fish eating birds that I delt with at the pond. Did I mention those fish eating gators?

These observations you made probably do indicate that the LMB should not have been harvested. Removing any HSB would have given more food to the LMB. You might have been justified to harvest HSB for that reason alone but even if you had the event would likely have taken some fish.

These observations suggest that you have had very good populations of intermediate sized bluegill in addition to the larger BG. In a situation where the predator population doesn't support harvest, or harvest is not prudent, there would be no other population to target other than the forage adults.

There isn't any 20/20 hindsight and no way to know if the event you encountered would have left you with any more fish than you have now even if you had you harvested. Counting harvest and the possibility of fish losses from the event, the final outcome might have been very similar. I would like to know more about how the standing weights going into events like this may exacerbate or lessen the severity. By this I mean "Is dip of carrying capacity of the event more severe if standing weights are higher going into the event?" I think this question isn't adequately answered and until it is we don't know that harvest will help one carry more fish through an event like this. Harvest may allow one to influence what survives a fish kill event and put one in favorable position have a more favorable population structure after a limiting event but we can't take that for granted.

The carrying capacity is always less the than potential standing weights that occur during favorable periods. This is especially true for ponds with above average or exceptional fertility. Here in the south, late summer is probably most limiting where in the North it is the winter. Every year fish are lost to these limiting periods and standing weights are restored to carrying capacity. Carrying capacity isn't the same year to year either and a person should manage around the norm as opposed to the exceptions.

I'm, as usual, going with Lusk on this. he says 2 things that are pertinent.

1. Cull small bass, under approx 12 inches, as they can over eat their food supply of bluegills and RES.. Unless it has an exceptional RW. Then keep it.

2. 95% of the eggs laid and hatched will never see their first birthday. They get eaten.

Channel cats rarely successful spawners in a pond environment. They go everywhere in a school, swim slowly and are too easy for predators to pick off.

It's time for a new game plan

I find that my fish holding capacity is more limited with hybrid stripers than any other fish. They are so strong & their gill plates so sharp that it is all I can do to hold on when they get up to around four or five pounds.

Lol, I see what you did there!

On a serious note, hybrid stripers ought to come with a warning. You're fine holding them by the mouth, but those gill plates slice like a razor. Three people have found that out at my place the hard way!